According to a media report out of New Jersey, a third doctor–the others are Shewmon and Calixto–has signed a declaration stating Jahi McMath is not brain dead. The family attorney Chris Dolan says he will petition the California Secretary of State to rescind the death certificate. From the N.J.com story: Dolan provided NJ Advance Media with signed declarations from four doctors, including Charles J. Prestigiacomo, director of Cerebrovascular and Endovascular Neurosurgery at University Hospital in Newark and chair of the neurological surgery department at Rutgers, stating that McMath isn’t brain dead.“The brain structure evidenced in the MRI is not consistent...

"Jahi McMath is ALIVE." The very first column I filed in 2014 exposed the plight of a beautiful young girl, the same age as my daughter, whom medical experts declared "brain dead" after a routine tonsillectomy gone wrong. Are you ready for the rest of the story? Doctors told Jahi's mom, Nailah Winkfield, that her child's organs would "shut down" and her brain would "liquefy" if kept on life support. Hostile hospital administrators in Oakland moved to pull the plug on Jahi. Medical officials callously referred to Jahi as "dead, dead, dead" and dismissed the child as a "body." Smug...

I accept properly diagnosed brain death as dead. Hence, when three doctors found that Jahi McMath was tragically gone, I accepted the diagnosis.But I also wrote that if her body did not deteriorate–as happens in almost all brain death cases–that would raise my eyebrows. Now, it’s one year later, and she remains here. My eyebrows are now above my receding hairline.Moreover, I am increasingly suspicious of the seeming ideological commitment of some to making sure she stays dead. The intensity of their resistance to even the possibility that a mistake has been made–or that we can learn something new about...

According to the State of California, JahiMcMath has been dead since December 9, 2013, when she went into cardiac arrest after catastrophic side effects from throat surgery. Oakland Children’s Hospital doctors insisted she was brain dead, that is, she had experienced total brain failure. Under California law, brain death is dead. When the doctors stated their intention to remove the life support from Jahi, her mother sued. A brouhaha ensued. A judge appointed an independent physician from Stanford to examine the girl, and he too found she was dead. The judge declared her dead and the state of California issued...

The mother of Jahi McMath, who three months ago was declared medically brain dead, said Thursday that her child has shown signs of life. McMath has shown a marketed spike in energy — moving in bed, turning her neck and bending at the waist while she continues to recover at an undisclosed facility, mom Nailah Winkfield said Thursday.

Hundreds of thousands of people will be marching around the country today to protest the wholesale slaughter of life in the womb. Catholics and others have kept that fight alive, to good effect, for decades. But as a faith that values both faith and reason, Catholicism makes careful distinctions on other life issues as well.Most people, for instance, are not familiar with what, specifically, constitutes brain death. It is not the most pleasant of topics to ponder. And, thank God, few of us have a pressing reason to do so. But the tragic case of a 13-year-old Oakland girl, Jahi...

The lawyer for the family of Jahi McMath, the 13-year-old who has been declared brain dead, said Wednesday that doctors successfully inserted a gastric tube and tracheotomy tube into the teenager at an as yet undisclosed facility. Jahi was transferred from Oakland Children’s Hospital January 5 after a protracted legal battle between the family and the hospital which declared Jahi brain dead December 12 and sought to remove her from a ventilator. The arraignment to move Jahi was reached during a hearing Friday before Alameda Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo under which Jahi’s mother, Nailah Winkfield, could remove her daughter...

A 13-year-old California girl who was declared brain dead after suffering complications from sleep apnea surgery has been given the feeding and breathing tubes that her family had been trying to obtain for weeks. Christopher Dolan, the attorney for the girl's family, said doctors inserted the gastric tube and tracheostomy tube Wednesday at the undisclosed facility where Jahi McMath was taken Jan. 5. The procedure was a success, Dolan said, and Jahi is getting the treatment that her family believes she should have gotten 28 days ago, when doctors at Children's Hospital Oakland first declared her brain dead.

A day after winning the three-week battle to take their brain-dead daughter from Children's Hospital Oakland, the family of Jahi McMath conceded Monday they are losing the ghastly war against nature. Her body, checked in at an undisclosed care facility Monday morning, has deteriorated so badly, that "Right now, we don't know if she's going to make it," said attorney Christopher Dolan. "She's in very bad shape," he said. "What I can tell you is that those examinations show that her medical condition, separate from the brain issue, is not good." Dolan's frank and sober assessment echoes a Friday legal...

At least one in five patients declared brain dead and approved as organ donors by one organ donation organization, are in fact still alive and are being killed by the removal of vital organs, a lawsuit filed last week in Manhattan alleges. The suit outlines the ghoulish worst-case scenario, one that was widely dismissed as scaremongering in the early days of the development of organ transplant technology, but which is getting a second hearing amidst growing concerns that coercion and abuse are becoming increasingly common in the highly lucrative transplant business. Patrick McMahon, a nurse practitioner and Air Force combat...

After a protracted legal battle, Children’s Hospital Oakland reached an agreement with Jahi Mcmath’s family to allow a medical team to enter the hospital to perform the procedures necessary to move her to a medical facility that will continue her care and treatment. Her mother and family say she is alive following a tonsillectomy gone awry that has left her in an incapacitated state since early December. The family in the case says the hospital has been starving Jahi for three weeks. The San Francisco Chronicle has more details: The agreement, described in the courtroom of Alameda County Superior Court...

After a protracted legal battle, Children’s Hospital Oakland reached an agreement with Jahi Mcmath’s family to allow a medical team to enter the hospital to perform the procedures necessary to move her to a medical facility that will continue her care and treatment. Her mother and family say she is alive following a tonsillectomy gone awry that has left her in an incapacitated state since early December. The family in the case says the hospital has been starving Jahi for three weeks. The San Francisco Chronicle has more details: The agreement, described in the courtroom of Alameda County Superior Court...

A view of St. Paul's Hospital. Credit: Brent Granby (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Washington D.C., Jan 4, 2014 / 06:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The â€śtragicâ€ť case of teenage girl Jahi McMath â€“ now at the center of a legal controversy over brain death â€“ shows the need to determine the facts before making ethical conclusions, says a bioethicist. â€śThe difficulty of these cases have to be recognized, especially in terms of the human suffering of the families,â€ť John Di Camillo of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Washington, D.C. told CNA Jan. 2. â€śItâ€™s not something that's simply a clear-cut, back-and-white...

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A judge on Tuesday ordered that a 13-year-old Northern California girl declared brain dead after suffering complications following a tonsillectomy be taken off life support. But Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo gave Jahi McMath's family until 5 p.m. Dec. 30 to file an appeal. She will stay on life support until then. Grillo issued the order after a Stanford doctor testified that Jahi is brain dead. Dr. Paul Graham Fisher's evaluation was the second to reach that conclusion. Children's Hospital of Oakland, where Jahi is hospitalized, has asked that the girl be taken off...

<p>The agreement, described in the Oakland courtroom of Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo, is the latest development in an unusual battle between the hospital and the girl's family, who has rejected declarations that Jahi is dead as a result of brain death.</p>

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A California hospital is unwilling to allow an outside doctor to fit a 13-year-old declared brain dead after tonsil surgery with the breathing and feeding tubes that would allow her to be safely transferred to another facility, its lawyer said Tuesday. Children's Hospital Oakland will not permit the procedures to be performed on its premises because Jahi McMath is legally dead in the view of doctors who have examined her, lawyer Douglas Straus wrote in a letter to the girl's family. "Performing medical procedures on the body of a deceased human being is simply not something...

The family of Terri Schiavo, a comatose woman who died in 2005, has become involved in helping the family of a comatose California teenager. Jahi McMath's family hopes to transfer the 13-year-old from Children's Hospital Oakland to New Beginnings, a New York facility dedicated to Schiavo's memory, the San Jose Mercury News reported. Jahi's family has gone to court to force Children's to keep her on a ventilator, while the hospital contends she is brain dead. Schiavo was the focus of a lengthy legal battle between her husband, who wanted to remove her from a feeding tube and allow her...

The last hope for Jahi McMath to be kept on a ventilator may come from a former Long Island hairdresser who runs a brain-injury treatment center dedicated to Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman whose case sparked a fierce nationwide end-of-life debate.

New Year's Day should be a time of fresh beginnings and forward motion. But for the family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, the holiday season has been suspended in a cloud of unfathomable pain and suffering: A routine tonsillectomy gone wrong. A beautiful child declared "brain dead." Lawyers, TV cameras, tears. The McMaths are fighting for life. On Monday, they won a court order that prevents Children's Hospital of Oakland from pulling the plug on Jahi until Jan. 7. Her relatives have been attacked as "publicity hounds" for doing everything possible to raise awareness about the young girl's tragic case. They've...

FULL TITLE: Jahi McMath: Mom and lawyer say only remaining option for brain-dead girl is a New York care facility OAKLAND -- A Los Angeles-area long-term care facility that had been willing to accept Jahi McMath has withdrawn its offer, leaving a New York hospital as the only apparent option for the brain-dead girl as a 5 p.m. Monday deadline to remove her from a ventilator approaches, her mother and attorney said Sunday. "I just found out that the facility my daughter was supposed to be going to has backed out," Jahi's mother, Nailah Winkfield, wrote on the family's fundraising...

The judge who is adjudicating the case of the family of the teenage girl in California who is the subject of a national debate over whether a hospital has the right to yank life support has granted an extension. A county judge extended the order for the hospital to keep Jahi McMath on life support until 5 p.m. on January 7. Her mother and family say she is alive. Jahi’s family has a door-to-door ambulance flight contracted to take her to a New York facility that will care for her. “The family has located a licensed facility in the state...

The family fighting to keep a brain-dead 13-year-old girl on medical support through Christmas blasted administrators at Children's Hospital Oakland on Thursday evening, saying that hospital officials told them in a private meeting that the girl had to be taken off her ventilator "quickly." "They said, 'What don't you understand?' She is dead, dead, dead,'" said Omari Sealey, the uncle of Jahi McMath, the Oakland teen who has been kept alive by machines since complications from a tonsil surgery last week in a case that has brought national attention and prayers from social media users around the world. "They just...